Temporary Brain Changes Lead to Accelerated Learning 140
An anonymous reader writes "In an advance that could help the treatment of learning impairments, strokes, tinnitus and chronic pain, UT Dallas researchers have found that stimulating nerves in the brain accelerates learning in laboratory tests. When the juice was turned off, researchers monitoring brain activity in rats found that brain responses eventually returned to their pre-stimulation state — but the animals kept the ability to perform their newly learned tasks."
Those who haven't read TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
... seem to be missing the parts where it says that the (yes, electrical) stimulation is stimulating neurotransmitters; and that any actual pain-effect is being countered by anaesthesia.
And I'm amazed that, all these comments in, we get "I for one welcome our super-intelligent rat overlords" but haven't yet got a "where do I sign up?". Man, when we were back in undergrad before USB was invented(*), we all wanted RS232 sockets near the bases of our skulls.
(*): Yes. You can all get off my lawn.